We have been using Acrobat JS actions for quite some time with very few issues; however, since upgrading to CS6 (Acrobat XI) we have slowly started to see problems arise on all of our 64 bit Windows (XP and 7) machines.

Our standard process is:

1) Acrobat is not running

2) Open a pdf in Acrobat (this is called from a perl script, although this is not required to reproduce the problem)

3) Select an Action from the Actions Wizard tool and click "Start"

4) Wait for the action to complete.

5) Shut down Acrobat without saving changes

Unfortunately, what we have been seeing recently is that when we click "Start", the script tries to run for about 10-15 seconds, and then a yellow "!" triangle appears next to the line which reads "Execute JavaScript" in the Action tool. We can then click on the "Full Report" link to see the following report:

Action Name: MyTestActopm

[-]testFile.pdf(Failed)

1.Execute JavaScript

Command Name: Execute JavaScript

Command Start Time: 2013-07-29 10:41:39

Command Status: Failed

If we restart the action, then the script immediately runs and its status is "Succeeded". The entire script takes anywhere from 2 seconds to 15 minutes. We run the script approximately 10,000 times per month on documents ranging from 10 to 2500 pages.

The content of the script is immaterial. I am currently reproducing this problem using the following script:

/* Put script title here */

var blah = "";

If we close the document (but keep Acrobat open) and open another document, then the script runs just fine. It is just the first time that we run the script that we see the problem. However, this really isn't a good solution for us because we have discovered that Acrobat automation is much more stable when Acrobat is shut down after processing each document.

Has anyone else seen this? Is this a known issues? Are there any good work-arounds?